Tasty Taiwanese Pork Paradise & Garlic Bombs at Corner 23 Bubble Tea

We quite like Taiwanese food but don’t really have a go-to place that we outright love yet. We used to like Red Persimmon in the Crystal Mall food court (closed and turned into something else), Lingering Flavour beside London Drugs on Kingsway near Joyce (which is now Bubble Waffle Cafe), and Kalvin’s Szechuan. We haven’t really explored Taiwanese food in Richmond except back in the 90s at places like Vogue. Good thing Instagram came through for us again when we found out about Corner 23 Bubble Tea on Cambie near King Edward Ave. Thanks to phancouver in particular for posting this photo.

Corner 23 has a small, cramped parking lot in the back that holds about 8 cars, and it can take a bit of back-n-forth to get into the innermost spots. I recommend backing your ass in…or finding some legal street parking.

King Edward skytrain station is just across the street. Some very nice takeout dinner possibilities for those on their way home after work!

Easy-to-remember hours. 11:00am to midnight every damn day.

Another important stipulation.

That cut-out doily pattern on the menu is crazy. I dunno who “Uncle D” is though…

This gave me a chuckle.

They have that red fermented pork dish (A-02) that we love at Kalvin’s Szechuan. We’ll try this one to compare.

The menu is huge, but a large chunk of it is rice combos. We got the A-10 Braised Pork Sauce with Egg on Rice plus some entrees/sides.

There’s a lot to explore in the Classical Taiwanese Dish section. We got K-01 Wan Luan Pork Hock (small). We were unsure about how they cook and serve it, so I googled “wan luan pork hock” and we liked what we saw, so we ordered it!

Note to restaurants: how you liking all this free advertising that social media is giving you? Also, the ESL staff had the most difficult time describing this dish, so thanks to all the bloggers out there! 😛

We just can’t get enough pork, so we also ordered K-25 Five Spice Stewed Pork Blood and Pork Intestine. So that makes FIVE meat dishes in total for our brunch (4 pork and 1 chicken). Not a vegetable dish in sight! Haha…

While we were waiting for our food (which came out in a fairly timely manner), I remembered that this space used to be a semi-generic Chinese restaurant that we tried once in the late 90s or early 2000s. It was a late night meal. Can’t remember if this place had a different name back then…definitely had a different layout.

Soft, oozy yolks are great and all, but hard-boiled yolks have their own appeal, especially when eaten with that saucy rice! I could come here by myself and just eat this dish. Perfect meal-in-a-bowl. Pickles and cilantro count as a veg, right?

K-01 Wan Luan Pork Hock (small for $10.50). Served cold with a thick, intensely garlicky sauce. If you’ve ever had sliced cold pork hock served with white vinegar & minced garlic for dipping, this is a sorta similar dish, except with more of a stewed/marinated flavour. The hock is cut into bite/mouth-sized chunks so it’s a different experience from eating thinly sliced hock. The skin and fat are firm-ish, with a great chew and bite to it. This isn’t a stewed-until-it’s-tender type dish. You have to LOVE rind and fat (and garlic) to enjoy this dish. It looks like a simple dish but it sent us over the moon.

That sauce is intense! So zingy, almost spicy with the amount of garlic essence jammed into it. You’ll be feeling, tasting, and smelling that garlic for hours afterwards. We should’ve got a bubble tea to cleanse our palates :/

K-25 Five Spice Stewed Pork Blood and Pork Intestine ($10.50). We loved this one too. Definitely for offal lovers. Pickled mustard greens in this dish too.

The intestine was tender/chewy, as guts usually are. The seasonings in the soup helped cut the funkiness, but as you chew and swallow, there’s an unmistakable pork intestine aroma that you will sense through retronasal olfaction (smells wafting up your throat to the back of your nose). More about retronasal olfaction here.

The “five spice” component of this dish is either very subtle, or it might be a different kind of “five spice” that doesn’t smell or taste like the typical (usually overbearing) Chinese five-spice powder. In any case, we loved this dish and devoured it as leftovers that night.

A-02 Pork with Red Fermented Sauce ($6.50). Much less consistent coating than at Kalvin’s Szechuan (see this post for photo). Visually it looks a lot like Chinese BBQ pork (charsiu) except sliced on the bias.

Tastewise, there was plenty of nam yu flavour. Nam yu are fermented tofu cubes sorta like fuyu except nam yu uses additional red rice wine lees, and in this dish it creates a funky, perfumey sweetness that I really like. Flavour was good, pork was moist, but I like this dish with more crunchy batter on the outside (like at Kalvin’s Szechuan).

A-26 Deep Fried Chicken Wings with Fermented Soybean Curd ($5.95). Apparently this dish contains fuyu (as mentioned above) but I couldn’t taste or smell that salty, funky, fermented tofu cube essence. Wicca could taste it a bit, but I longed for a stronger fuyu flavour. As it was, it just sorta gave a general savouriness to the wings.

If you’ve ever eaten Esrom washed rind cheese, the taste and smell of esrom totally reminds me of fuyu. It might even be similar bacteria that’s involved in creating both.

The wings were juicy but the coating wasn’t crispy at all. The one disappointing dish of the meal. But it wasn’t terrible by any means, so the batting average for this meal was still great.

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieS H R I N K A G E // No shrinkage here with @backcountrybrewing 's impressive 3.4% #IndiaSessionAle#IWasInThePool ! You get most of the juicy goodness of a full-on #hazyipa but with half the alcohol! The finish is understandably lighter and waterier but for the style it's quite an accomplishment. #craftbeer#backcountrybrewing#yvr#vancouver // You might've noticed way less beer posts lately. I've stopped drinking alcohol on most weekdays, so cut down my consumption by half. Feels good but my beer fridge is bursting at the seams. Strictly cream of the crop from now on (hopefully).

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieC A U L I F L O W E R // Wicca whipped up a #ChickenCurry with #RoastedCauliflower for #dinner . The extra roasting step is so worth it! She also threw in mushrooms, sweet potato, tomatoes, and carrots. We've been using Megachef blue label fish sauce for cooking lately and it's great — a bit bolder and saltier than Red Boat. (We still love Red Boat for making nuoc cham though!) The Megachef has great depth, which you can tell by tasting side-by-side with cheap fish sauce, which tastes mostly like salt and stank. #curry#yvr#vancouver

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieS W E E T ' N S W E E T P O R K // Some good #Korean#SweetAndSourPork ($18) with crunchy rice flour batter at @andamiro_korean_bistro . Like Chinese S&S pork, this Korean version is still plenty sweet and good but you have to be in the mood. Swipe to see the royal flourish of omelette strips on their Royal Beef Japchae ($16) and decent Bulgogi Stew ($12). Good value and service at one of the few Korean restaurants in Vancouver proper. They gotta do something about the smell of gas though. It's not the mercaptan (rotten eggs)

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieC H E E S E ' N C H I C K E N // Some good/decent #Korean eats this past weekend with @michelle_wsy . (Great seeing you and the family! Thanks for the exclusive American Spam!) I finally got to try a Korean bbq dish with melty cheese in it: #ChickenBulgogi ($13) with #cheese (+$3). Amusing but not particularly delicious. Watery bland cheese hardens fast. The restaurant @andamiro_korean_bistro is in a convenient location (for us), has good value and prompt service, with decent food that does the job. Quick review of this place now posted on my blog. #andamiro

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieO U T O F S E A S O N // No kidding, #uni is totally out of season right now, but that didn't stop me from trying these dirt cheap big unis (3 for $10) from Steveston. After all the work of cutting these guys open and cleaning the #seaurchin gonads, the result tasted watery with none of the silky richness that uni has from October to March. Lesson learned! (Actually I already knew this going in, but I had to test the theory for myself .) #yvr#vancouver#sashimi